International journal of environmental and science education, 2015
Energy literacy is multidimensional, comprising broad content knowledge as well as affect and beh... more Energy literacy is multidimensional, comprising broad content knowledge as well as affect and behavior. Our previous study has defined four core dimensions for the assessment framework, including energy concepts, reasoning on energy issues, lowcarbon lifestyle, and civic responsibility for a sustainable society. The present study compiled a series of contextualized question items into a computer-based test (CBT) platform to examine students’ energy literacy. Each test unit included a scenario, presented via multimedia materials (e.g., text, image, short video, and animation), that pertained to real-life situations. Various types of questions were employed (e.g., multiple true-false, multiple choice, and short-answer) that required students to construct responses and make judgments. A total of 1,711 secondary school students participated in this survey. The results indicate that the energy literacy level of Taiwanese secondary students is discouragingly low and inter-correlations bet...
Examining and developing courses of education for sustainable development (ESD) is the goal of th... more Examining and developing courses of education for sustainable development (ESD) is the goal of this study. Building on the theory of game-based learning, this study develops teaching strategies that employ board games for ESD. The design context of the board game, entitled “Be Blessed Taiwan”, is situated in the dilemma between biological conservation and economic development. It incorporates four core systemic concepts: the economy, policies, society, and ecology. Students from two high schools played the game for 200 min and 400 min, respectively (100 min per week). The study collected complete pre-game and post-game data from 34 high school students, including the test of scientific concepts, and gameplay results. The research results indicate that students’ test scores significantly increased after the gameplay with a medium effect size; specifically, a large effect on the dimension of biodiversity concepts and a medium effect on the dimension of biological conservation concepts...
The goals of this study are to determine the Turkish preservice science teachers’ views about sci... more The goals of this study are to determine the Turkish preservice science teachers’ views about scientific inquiry. In this research, simple descriptive survey is conducted for the purpose of describing pre-service science teachers’ views about scientific inquiry. For this purpose, “Views about Scientific Inquiry (VASI) Questionnaire” was utilized to collect data. Seventy two senior preservice teachers in a Science Teacher Education Program at a large university participated in this study. Data were collected using qualitative research methods of individual open-ended instrument, and semi-structured interviews. Findings revealed that the majority of the preservice teachers’ responses of the scientific inquiry aspects are naive. On the other hand, for only three aspects of SI, the pre-service science teachers have informed views. These aspects are inquiry procedures are guided by the question asked and all scientists performing the same procedures may not get the same results. In this ...
The goal of education for sustainable development is to develop future citizens who can make info... more The goal of education for sustainable development is to develop future citizens who can make informed decision and take responsible action to solve the problem. The concept of action competence proposed by Jensen and Schnack in 1997, which emerges as a critical thought from traditional environmental education, gradually attracts the attention with the maturing on the idea of sustainability. This research aims to systematically analyse the peer-reviewed studies published between 1997 and 2017 that embraced the concept of action competence as the instructional approach. After coding 170 articles from two quality databases, some patterns emerge from the year of publication in the resulting 34 empirical studies. Findings on the research design, pathway of intervention, instructional setting, and learning outcome increase our understanding of action competence applied in the authentic context. There is a sharp increase on the inter-disciplinary topic of sustainable development. It reflec...
This article reports the design of a scientific board game, named “Element Enterprise Tycoon” (EE... more This article reports the design of a scientific board game, named “Element Enterprise Tycoon” (EET), which creates a scenario combining chemical elements, techniques, and products in daily life. The game cards are designed to motivate students not only to retrieve information about chemical elements, but also to be proficient in chemistry. Moreover, the game creates opportunities for group interactions and competitions to engage students in learning chemical elements as they do in regular science curricula. The EET has been field-tested with a group of middle school students to evaluate its applicability. Empirical data show that students improve their understanding of chemistry concepts with a median level of effect size. In particular, students achieve better performance in terms of chemistry-related technique concepts. The follow-up interviews reflect students’ positive feedback and attitudes toward science learning through board game playing and their willingness to continue to ...
This research uses board games as teaching material to develop students’ decision-making ability ... more This research uses board games as teaching material to develop students’ decision-making ability and basic scientific literacy and to foster students’ value for nature and social caring by working with socioscientific issues. The board game structure contains four perspective systems: ecological, economic, cultural, and political. In the game processing, students must handle, consider, and understand the different role players’ positions and face different missions that involve socioeconomic and environmental conflicts. When making any decisions, students affect the follow-up game behaviors and develop tendencies. The board game instruction was field-tested with 38 high-school students from two different high schools. Students played the board game for a total of 200 minutes. Students’ scientific conceptions concerning biodiversity (closed-ended) and perspectives on socioscientific issues (open-ended) were assessed before and after the board game lesson. The results showed that stud...
This study investigated the epistemological beliefs of physics and mathematics held by a group of... more This study investigated the epistemological beliefs of physics and mathematics held by a group of college students in Taiwan, and explored how they interpret the relationship between the two disciplines. Participants' beliefs were examined via open-ended ...
The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, Jul 1, 2011
This study investigated the epistemological beliefs of physics and mathematics held by a group of... more This study investigated the epistemological beliefs of physics and mathematics held by a group of college students in Taiwan, and explored how they interpret the relationship between the two disciplines. Participants’ beliefs were examined via open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. This study also conducted a historical review of the interrelationship between physics and mathematics and took experts’ beliefs of physics and mathematics into account in order to establish a reference base for interpreting the participating college students’ beliefs. The findings indicated that these college students held moderate epistemological beliefs about physics and mathematics in some sense, but lacked critical thinking in how to deal with potential conflicts among several issues. They were ignorant of social and cultural factors, and disregarded the role of philosophical beliefs, showed insufficient knowledge about the role of creativity and imagination, and lacked a realizati...
International journal of environmental and science education, 2015
Energy literacy is multidimensional, comprising broad content knowledge as well as affect and beh... more Energy literacy is multidimensional, comprising broad content knowledge as well as affect and behavior. Our previous study has defined four core dimensions for the assessment framework, including energy concepts, reasoning on energy issues, lowcarbon lifestyle, and civic responsibility for a sustainable society. The present study compiled a series of contextualized question items into a computer-based test (CBT) platform to examine students’ energy literacy. Each test unit included a scenario, presented via multimedia materials (e.g., text, image, short video, and animation), that pertained to real-life situations. Various types of questions were employed (e.g., multiple true-false, multiple choice, and short-answer) that required students to construct responses and make judgments. A total of 1,711 secondary school students participated in this survey. The results indicate that the energy literacy level of Taiwanese secondary students is discouragingly low and inter-correlations bet...
Examining and developing courses of education for sustainable development (ESD) is the goal of th... more Examining and developing courses of education for sustainable development (ESD) is the goal of this study. Building on the theory of game-based learning, this study develops teaching strategies that employ board games for ESD. The design context of the board game, entitled “Be Blessed Taiwan”, is situated in the dilemma between biological conservation and economic development. It incorporates four core systemic concepts: the economy, policies, society, and ecology. Students from two high schools played the game for 200 min and 400 min, respectively (100 min per week). The study collected complete pre-game and post-game data from 34 high school students, including the test of scientific concepts, and gameplay results. The research results indicate that students’ test scores significantly increased after the gameplay with a medium effect size; specifically, a large effect on the dimension of biodiversity concepts and a medium effect on the dimension of biological conservation concepts...
The goals of this study are to determine the Turkish preservice science teachers’ views about sci... more The goals of this study are to determine the Turkish preservice science teachers’ views about scientific inquiry. In this research, simple descriptive survey is conducted for the purpose of describing pre-service science teachers’ views about scientific inquiry. For this purpose, “Views about Scientific Inquiry (VASI) Questionnaire” was utilized to collect data. Seventy two senior preservice teachers in a Science Teacher Education Program at a large university participated in this study. Data were collected using qualitative research methods of individual open-ended instrument, and semi-structured interviews. Findings revealed that the majority of the preservice teachers’ responses of the scientific inquiry aspects are naive. On the other hand, for only three aspects of SI, the pre-service science teachers have informed views. These aspects are inquiry procedures are guided by the question asked and all scientists performing the same procedures may not get the same results. In this ...
The goal of education for sustainable development is to develop future citizens who can make info... more The goal of education for sustainable development is to develop future citizens who can make informed decision and take responsible action to solve the problem. The concept of action competence proposed by Jensen and Schnack in 1997, which emerges as a critical thought from traditional environmental education, gradually attracts the attention with the maturing on the idea of sustainability. This research aims to systematically analyse the peer-reviewed studies published between 1997 and 2017 that embraced the concept of action competence as the instructional approach. After coding 170 articles from two quality databases, some patterns emerge from the year of publication in the resulting 34 empirical studies. Findings on the research design, pathway of intervention, instructional setting, and learning outcome increase our understanding of action competence applied in the authentic context. There is a sharp increase on the inter-disciplinary topic of sustainable development. It reflec...
This article reports the design of a scientific board game, named “Element Enterprise Tycoon” (EE... more This article reports the design of a scientific board game, named “Element Enterprise Tycoon” (EET), which creates a scenario combining chemical elements, techniques, and products in daily life. The game cards are designed to motivate students not only to retrieve information about chemical elements, but also to be proficient in chemistry. Moreover, the game creates opportunities for group interactions and competitions to engage students in learning chemical elements as they do in regular science curricula. The EET has been field-tested with a group of middle school students to evaluate its applicability. Empirical data show that students improve their understanding of chemistry concepts with a median level of effect size. In particular, students achieve better performance in terms of chemistry-related technique concepts. The follow-up interviews reflect students’ positive feedback and attitudes toward science learning through board game playing and their willingness to continue to ...
This research uses board games as teaching material to develop students’ decision-making ability ... more This research uses board games as teaching material to develop students’ decision-making ability and basic scientific literacy and to foster students’ value for nature and social caring by working with socioscientific issues. The board game structure contains four perspective systems: ecological, economic, cultural, and political. In the game processing, students must handle, consider, and understand the different role players’ positions and face different missions that involve socioeconomic and environmental conflicts. When making any decisions, students affect the follow-up game behaviors and develop tendencies. The board game instruction was field-tested with 38 high-school students from two different high schools. Students played the board game for a total of 200 minutes. Students’ scientific conceptions concerning biodiversity (closed-ended) and perspectives on socioscientific issues (open-ended) were assessed before and after the board game lesson. The results showed that stud...
This study investigated the epistemological beliefs of physics and mathematics held by a group of... more This study investigated the epistemological beliefs of physics and mathematics held by a group of college students in Taiwan, and explored how they interpret the relationship between the two disciplines. Participants' beliefs were examined via open-ended ...
The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, Jul 1, 2011
This study investigated the epistemological beliefs of physics and mathematics held by a group of... more This study investigated the epistemological beliefs of physics and mathematics held by a group of college students in Taiwan, and explored how they interpret the relationship between the two disciplines. Participants’ beliefs were examined via open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. This study also conducted a historical review of the interrelationship between physics and mathematics and took experts’ beliefs of physics and mathematics into account in order to establish a reference base for interpreting the participating college students’ beliefs. The findings indicated that these college students held moderate epistemological beliefs about physics and mathematics in some sense, but lacked critical thinking in how to deal with potential conflicts among several issues. They were ignorant of social and cultural factors, and disregarded the role of philosophical beliefs, showed insufficient knowledge about the role of creativity and imagination, and lacked a realizati...
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